March For Our Lives Co-Founder Leaves Group, Cites Regrets

Sep 27, 2018

By: Teresa Mull

Cameron Kasky, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior who helped found the national March For Our Lives (MFOL) gun control movement, says he’s leaving the group after traveling the country and listening to other people’s perspectives.

Kasky said in an interview with Guy Benson on Fox News Radio last week:

“This summer when March For Our Lives went on the summer tour that we embarked on, I met that person in Texas who got that semiautomatic weapon because that’s how they like to protect their family. I met the 50-some-odd percent of women who are pro-life, even though I thought it was preposterous that a woman could be pro-life and not pro-choice at the time. I learned that a lot of our issues politically come from a lack of understanding of other perspectives and also the fact that so often young conservatives and young liberals will go into debate, like I said earlier, trying to beat the other one as opposed to come to an agreement ... I’m working on some efforts to encourage bipartisanship, or at least discussion that is productive and help a lot of people avoid the mistakes that I made.”

One of the “mistakes” Kasky said he made was lambasting Florida Sen. Marco Rubio during a televised townhall for accepting contributions from the NRA.

“Senator Rubio, it’s hard to look at you and not look down a barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz, but the point is you’re here and there are some people who are not,” Lasky said at the time.

Since then, the teenager has changed his tune, but not necessarily his ideology. Kasky said in his interview with Benson:

“I look back on that and I say, you know what, there were people who had just been buried, and when you’re looking at somebody that you find might in some way have been complicit in this murderer obtaining the weapon, it’s hard not to say something like that. But, I went into that wanting less conversation and more to embarrass Rubio, and that was my biggest flaw.”

Kasky said he is leaving MFOL because he thinks his friends and fellow members can do the work without him, and it’s his goal now to “…take all the things I was kicking myself for and to encourage others to avoid it.”

“Let’s hope this young man will listen to voices of reason, and address the real issue here: firearms aren’t the real cause of the mass tragedies,” said Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights.